


the fire, the hammer and the anvil

by togglemaps



Series: to make us steel [4]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Angst, Breaking Up & Making Up, Insecurity, Jealousy, M/M, Pining, R plus L equals J, Stark Family Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 00:07:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9265085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togglemaps/pseuds/togglemaps
Summary: AKA Everybody Comes to Winterfell.Daenerys finally arrives in the North and long, protracted negotiations commence. Before all that, Lady Brienne returns and unintentionally causes a rift between Jon and Tormund. Arya and Nymeria arrive back at Winterfell to find Gendry already there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to frabjousday for betaing this for me, even though it isn't her fandom and it's also ridic long. 
> 
> Sorry this took so long to get to you (I finished the first draft ages ago, but the editing held me up l o l), but the series is now officially finished yay. I have future headcanons though, so there may be a few fluffy or shippy one-shots later on. 
> 
> I'm togglemaps over on tumblr as well, if anyone wants to drop some prompts in my askbox. :D
> 
> Also I blanked on tags, so if you think anything should be tagged drop me a comment.

He dreams of a woman who leaves him in an empty room with a plate of bread and cheese. He eats, then he lays in bed until he hears the door open. He sits up and watches Tormund walk towards him. Tormund is grinning, wide and infectious and when Jon laughs, he isn’t even certain if it’s him or his dream self that wants to make the sound. 

“What’s going on?” he asks. 

“Isn’t it obvious? I’ve come to steal you from your bed.” 

Jon’s dream-self laughs, joyful in a way he can’t imagine being in his waking life. “Tormund, love, I’ve shared your bed for a decade. I don’t think you need to steal me.” 

“Maybe I want to,” Tormund grumbles. “Never got a chance to earlier.” 

Jon rolls his eyes when Tormund flings him over his shoulder, taking a moment to steady himself before he begins walking haltingly towards the door. When they’re out in the hall, Jon slaps Tormund on the arse and says, “Put me down. Your leg is going to give out on you and we’re both going to end up on the floor.” 

It’s strange to feel himself say things without permission. It had been odd when it had been the Targaryen of old and the Blacksmith, but this is stranger. His own voice, speaking words that mean nothing to him. 

Tormund puts him back on his feet, grumbling and rubbing his right knee and thigh. Jon wraps an arm around his waist and they walk slowly through unfamiliar halls to another room. This one has a big bed that is laden down with furs, a table flanked with chairs and a couple of inviting armchairs in front of a fire place. 

He pushes Tormund down onto the bed and pulls off his boots and his pants. There is a nasty scar on his right leg, close to the knee, and both the thigh and the knee are swollen and painful looking. He rubs the knee and thigh gently with his warm hands. “Tormund Giantsbane, leader of the free folk and Lord of the Gift, you are a fool and an idiot.” He leans down and presses a kiss to Tormund’s knee. “A sweet fool and an idiot, but a fool and an idiot nonetheless.” 

“I tried to convince them to elect someone else,” Tormund complains, staring up at the ceiling. “But they won’t. With my leg the way that it is, they should have replaced me years ago.” 

“It would be the height of foolishness. You lead them through the Long Night, you negotiated with the dragon queen for them, where would they be without you?”

“Of course you think that. You’re my lover.” 

“Husband, now. You think I should have Daenarys proclaim you Prince Consort of Dragonstone?” 

Tormund laughs. “I think I would make an even poorer prince than I do a lord.” 

“If you’re only going to say stupid things, I think you should be quiet and just let me rub your leg.” 

“Give me five minutes, the pain will be gone and I’ll fuck you in this pile of furs so nice you’ll make so much noise you’ll wake up the whole castle.” 

“Course you will, love,” Jon says, laughing softly. 

 

It takes Rickon a little while to grow used to the saddle. He had spent his years with Osha riding bareback and it takes some convincing for him to acquiesce to try riding with a saddle. 

It takes Rickon only a few minutes to grow used to it, though, and when he does, he rides out into the wolfswood with such speed that Jon struggles to keep up. Jon has been a talented horseman since he was very young, but Father had always looked pained whenever he saw Jon return from riding, sweaty, flushed and happy. 

He can guess why Father felt that way now, though the specifics still elude him. Lyanna Stark had been unmatched in her skill with a horse. Had Father been concerned that people would see how adept Jon was on horseback and think of her? Or had it just been painful to see Jon, his sister’s son, excel at something she herself had been so good at? Perhaps it had been both. Perhaps it had been neither. 

Even so, it was clear that if Lyanna's skill had been passed down to anyone, it was Rickon, who rode like the Others themselves were at his back. 

All Jon can do is follow in his wake; always pushing, pushing, pushing. 

When they get back to Winterfell, both riders and horses are breathing hard and covered in sweat. Jon chases after Rickon to the end; if nothing else, to speak to him about having the courtesy to only work a horse this hard if he intends to care for them himself afterwards, but Rickon is already leading his horse into the stables. He talks to the horse in a voice that goes from soft and gentle to so enthusiastic that it makes Jon want to laugh and then back again.

In the stables, Rickon has already removed the saddle and blanket from his horse and is brushing it down. A stable boy hovers nervously behind him. Jon places a hand on Rickon’s shoulder as he leads his own horse into the stables and Rickon smiles at him, wide and free. 

 

As they walk back to the castle, he wants to put a hand between Rickon’s shoulder blades, to rest comfortably there, but at some point in the past few weeks Rickon has grown taller than Jon. He could still do it, but now the instinct feels foolish, even patronising. Rickon is almost a man grown now and will be thirteen in a few weeks. Rickon is going to be head and shoulders taller than Jon, is going to be taller even than Tormund. 

He and Rickon bathe in the hot springs and then return to the castle, drying themselves quickly and putting on clean clothes before going to sit in front of the fire in Father’s solar. At Sansa’s request, the servants keep the fire in this room burning all day and it’s always the first place that Rickon goes after having been outside in the cold and the wind and the snow. When they are sufficiently warm and dry again, they head outside to where Tormund and Ser Davos will be waiting for them. 

Jon seats himself nearby as Ser Davos and Tormund instruct Rickon on sword fighting. Neither had learnt in any sort of tradition way and Jon, wrapped in furs, finds it fascinating to watch. On occasion, he gets up to correct a posture or technique that might cause problems for Rickon in the future, but mostly he watches Tormund and Rickon. 

Ser Davos had accused Melisandre of killing Stannis Baratheon daughter, Shireen, with fire, of sacrificing the girl to her Red God. Jon had sent Melisandre south and told her never to return. 

Both the dead girl and Melisandre’s absence weigh on him, warring ideas that keep him awake and wracked with guilt. He wishes for a woman who had murdered a child, a woman whose company he had never sought voluntarily anyway. Power was power and it felt as though they didn’t have enough of it to keep their enemies at bay. Before, he had sometimes spied the Red Woman and tried to will her away. He had thought when Rhaegal arrived, she would dog the dragon every waking moment but she’d stayed far away. 

Mostly, she’d just watched Jon and he’d pretended not to notice. 

Tormund is determined that Rickon will be the fastest man of his size that anybody has ever seen and has him working on his footwork endlessly. There must be standard drills that Rickon can do, as well as the ones that Tormund seems to have come up with on his own. Perhaps Lord Royce would know, or Lord Glover. 

He’s watching Rickon’s feet, moving quicker and quicker with each repetition, when one of the guards on the wall blows two short horn blasts. One short blow of the horn means a known rider arriving or returning; two blasts meant an unknown rider approaching. Jon is up on his feet almost immediately and racing for the stairs, struggling to keep his furs around him as he climbs up to the top of Winterfall’s walls. Rickon, Tormund and Ser Davos join him only moments later, all of them squinting at the two horses in the distance. 

It’s Tormund who first recognises the two figures on the horses. “I know who that is,” he says. “ _That_ is the Lady Brienne. I’m only surprised it took me so long to recognise her, even from this distance.” This he says with a grin and a wink to Rickon. 

Jon frowns and turns his eyes back to the two horses riding towards them. Rickon’s asking about Lady Brienne and as Tormund begins describing her in exquisite, painstaking detail, Jon turns and walks down and back into the courtyard. “Aye, a more magnificent woman you’ll never find,” Tormund says, and Jon walks a little quicker. It isn’t until he’s back inside the castle that he can stop hearing Tormund’s voice singing the praises of Brienne of Tarth. 

 

He goes to sleep alone, without even Ghost for company, and dreams of the Blacksmith again. This time, even the beauty of Old Valyria fails to move him. 

The glyphs on the Blacksmith’s arms are gently oozing blood and his lover is cradling one of them in his hands. He’s murmuring words in Old Valyrian and gently wrapping the Blacksmith’s arms with linen bandages. Once he’s done, he leans down and presses a kiss gently to his bandaged arms. 

“Other people don’t do that you know,” the Blacksmith teases gently. He runs his fingers through Jon’s dream-hair with an ease that could never be possible with his real hair. 

“No,” he agrees. 

“They say it differently too.” 

“Of course. It’s a spell and spells are about will. I don’t need to try very hard to want you to be healthy with everything I have. I don’t have to try at all.” 

The Blacksmith’s eyes go soft and gentle, but then frowns and removes his arm from Jon’s grip. “You shouldn’t say things like that. People might hear.” 

 

Sansa sends for him the next day. She had wanted him to join them for dinner the previous evening, to celebrate Lady Brienne’s return, but he had claimed fatigue and spent the evening brooding in his tent. As he walks into Winterfell, he keeps his pace slow and his head down. If he could spend today alone, he would. He has no desire to inflict himself on anybody while he’s feeling like this. Even Ghost is avoiding him. 

There is a man standing outside Father’s solar, handsome and broad-shouldered and familiar. He opens his mouth to say _I dreamed of you_ and then closes it again. He can’t say that. Most people aren’t Daenerys. He dreamed of this man; this man didn’t dream of him. 

Sansa motions them both inside the room and she and Jon sit. The man hovers hesitantly, glancing at the chairs and then saying, “My lady, my lord—”

“I’m not a Lord,” Jon interrupts. 

The man hesitates. “My lady, then. I thought you would want to hear news of your sister, Arya. I don’t—I wish I had more recent news of her, but I don’t. My name is Gendry, and some years ago now we were both taken from King’s Landing by a man of the Night’s Watch named Yoran.” 

The story he tells would be unbelievable if Jon weren’t a man who came back from death, if Sansa weren’t sitting beside him having a story almost as mad. His anger towards the Red Woman only grows as he hears of Gendry coming so close to death at her hand. By the time he’s done, Sansa’s dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief and Jon finds himself struggling for words. All he can find is, “Thank you.” 

Sansa nods. “Yes, thank you so much, Gendry. The Lady Brienne has seen Arya a little more recently but—”

“Oh. I’m sorry for wasting your time, my lady—” 

“No!” Sansa says, at the same time as Jon says, “ _Wasting_!” 

“Why don’t you sit?” Sansa says. “I’m sorry I didn’t offer you any refreshments earlier. I’ll have someone bring something.” She stands. 

Gendry has been shaking his head for almost as long as Sansa was speaking. “Oh no, my lady,” he says. “I’ve been travelling a long time. I would dirty the chair.” 

Sansa huffs, irritated, and begins moving the heavy, overstuffed chair to the side. Before Jon or Gendry can go to help, she’s already moved it to one side and pulled up a plain wooden seat from near the desk. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she says. “But if you need an easily cleaned seat.” 

Once Sansa has gone to order food and drink, Jon leans forward in his chair and says, “I knew your uncle, Stannis Baratheon. You look like him, a little. More than a little really.” He pauses. “I—did you pass through the free folk camp on your way to the castle?” 

Gendry has sat down on the chair Sansa provided. “No,” he says. 

“Perhaps you’ve heard the rumours about dragons.” 

Gendry laughs. “Yes. People really will believe anything.” 

He hesitates. “Well. Yes. This one is more believable than others I’m afraid. A number of weeks ago now, a dragon showed up in the camp. Her name is Rhaegal.” 

There is only silence in the room until Sansa returns. She glances from Jon to Gendry, then asks, “What’s wrong?” Gendry has not looked away from Jon’s face since he stopped talking. 

“He claims there’s a dragon.” 

“There is,” she says. “In the free folk camp. Her name’s Rhaegal.” 

Gendry’s eyes finally move from Jon’s face to Sansa’s. “What?” 

“Perhaps we should eat first and then we can go see the dragon?” Sansa suggests. “I’m sure Gendry is hungry after his long journey.” 

 

Gendry is frozen in place, watching Rhaegal laze about with Ghost sitting atop her back. As usual, the ground around her is not only free of snow but the grass is brown and blistered and the dirt beneath it hard and dry. She exudes so much heat that even now, as winter settles in, flying her is an exercise in contradictions. Anything pressed up against her is hot, but anything not—like his face, for instance—gets incredibly cold. 

He has yet to find a way to fly her that is dignified, warm and unlikely to strain anything. 

They are just close enough that Gendry can be certain she isn’t some sort of trick, or a strangely deformed horse. 

“By the gods,” Gendry breathes quietly. “A dragon. A _real_ dragon.” 

“She’s got a temper,” Jon says. “But she’s not so bad really. Well, she’ll kill you if you’re not careful, so she’s bad in that sense I suppose.” He admits this only reluctantly. “She’s remarkable though. Would you like to go closer?” 

Gendry’s silent for a long time. The longer he’s silent the more betrayed Jon begins to feel. Since he awoke from death, his dreams haven’t steered him wrong, have lead him to Rhaegal and to Daenerys and he thought they were leading this man to him, leading _him_ to this man. 

Jon’s shoulders are beginning to slump when Gendry starts walking slowly towards Rhaegal. He keeps his eyes on her as he says, “Is there anything I shouldn’t do?” 

“Do or say anything cruel. Try to climb on her back.” Two drunk squires from the Vale had tried a few nights ago and it was only Rickon sleeping beneath her wing that had saved their idiotic, useless lives. Lord Royce had them digging privies in addition to their usual duties, and they had been instructed to tell their story far and wide. 

Jon had run from his tent as soon as Rhaegal’s shrieks woke him, but he wouldn’t have made it in time to save their lives. 

Gendry stops walking and tears his eyes away from Rhaegal to ask incredulously, “Somebody tried to climb on her back?” 

“Two someones. The luckiest fools in all of Westeros, to have escaped with their lives.” 

They are only seven or eight feet away from Rhaegal when Gendry halts. Ghost has gone from sitting atop Rhaegal’s back like a king to curling up underneath one of her wings, both of them now fast asleep. The two men stand in silence for a long time. 

Not long before Gendry speaks, it begins to snow. “Why did you bring me here?” 

“The Red Woman was here,” Jon says. “But you need not fear her. I sent her away. If she returns, I will execute her for the murder of—your cousin, actually.” 

“Why did you bring me here?” Gendry repeats. 

“Your father is Robert Baratheon. The blood of Old Valyria runs through your veins and you are a blacksmith.” 

“I don’t understand.” 

“This camp is mostly made up of people from beyond the Wall. Wildlings, they’re called here. They call themselves the free folk. Have you wondered why they’re here?” 

“No.” 

Jon smiles a little. “I suppose that’s fair. They fled over the Wall because of what’s beyond it. Because of what’s coming. The long night is coming and with it, White Walkers and wights and all manner of other horrors.” 

Gendry stares blankly at him and then looks at Rhaegal. “The dragon—”

“Has returned to this world to bring us hope. Valyrian steel kills White Walkers. Fire kills wights. What makes Valyrian steel, Gendry?” 

“Dragon fire,” Gendry says softly. 

“I don’t think she’s here now by accident and I don’t think you are either. Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t. But I think we have to try, don’t you?” 

“Yes,” Gendry says, so softly the word barely seems to leave his mouth at all. Gendry turns to Jon, baffled and distressed. “I’m just a blacksmiths apprentice. My mother—she worked in a tavern.” 

Jon wishes he could say he understood, but he can’t. He was ‘just’ a bastard, but a well-loved, well-cared for bastard. It was only really in comparison to Robb that he was ‘just’ anything. If it hadn’t been for Lady Stark, maybe even that would have been a small thing. Perhaps it is only hindsight that made the scorn of so many mean so little in comparison to the warmth of his family, now that so many of them were dead, now that Lady Stark isn't here to make him feel unwelcome in his own home. Sam may have been the first born son, but he had been a ‘just’. Tyrion Lannister had been one as well. Yet, there is something to it that he understands, if he looks at it sideways. “I discovered something about my father recently. That he wasn’t who I thought he was. That Father wasn’t my father. That I was…just his nephew. I am no more sure of my father than you are of yours, I think. Both the one who raised me, and the one who sired me.” 

Rhaegal yawns and turns her head towards them. 

“This man is going to be your friend,” he tells her. 

She eyes Gendry sceptically. Gendry eyes her back, no less sceptical. 

 

Tormund’s waiting in Jon’s tent when he returns from Winterfell, having shown Gendry to one of the less fire-damaged rooms in the castle. He’s staring at the canvas wall, frowning. 

He smiles when he sees Jon come in though, a wry and amused thing. “Haven’t seen you in a while. You been avoiding me, Snow?” 

“Well I thought you might want to admire the Lady Brienne without my presence making it awkward.” Bitterness floods him. How could he have thought that this would end any other way? 

“What?” 

Jon turns his back and begins to tug his gloves off. “I would think it would be awkward to try and pursue a new lover when your old one doesn’t know enough to make himself scarce.” 

Tormund frowns. “Scarce?” 

“Yes,” Jon snaps. “ _Scarce_.” 

“I don’t know what the word _means_ , Snow.” If the use of his much-hated bastard name had been teasing only moments earlier, it’s now spat with anger. He turns around and Tormund has leaned forward in his chair, his face slightly flushed and his eyes sharp and seething. 

“It means—I didn’t want to get in the way, so I stayed out of the way.” 

Tormund’s face does something that Jon has never seen it do—the anger disappears and is replaced with…nothing. It becomes smooth and blank. The only sign that the anger ever existed is a still lightly clenched jaw. “Ah,” Tormund says softly. “You think I am thoughtless, selfish man. You think I am small, inside, where it counts.” He stands. “Better to find that out now, I suppose.” He sweeps out of the tent, all restrained fury.

Fuck. 

Something sinks inside Jon’s chest. It’s too big a feeling to be his heart or his stomach. Perhaps it’s simply the dream of some possible future dying in his chest. 

 

For nearly three weeks, he and Tormund don’t exchange a single word more than is required to keep the army running and to begin planning their return to the Wall. If some of the free folk had been unsure about what to think about Jon and Tormund as lovers, Jon and Tomund arguing appears to unnerve far more of them. 

Most of the free folk had reached the point where they seemed happy to ignore Jon, but now they shy away fearfully or glare in his direction. He swears he saw one or two making signs to ward off evil as he passed. 

He’s spent most of his time with Gendry, trying to tease out the process for making Valyrian steel from nothing more than dreams and the scraps of information that the Maester could remember from his studies. Gendry spends his time with Jon or the Maester, repeating the spells over and over. He’s so close to having the pronunciation right. 

Sansa thinks they’re mad. Rickon thinks that if he should have to learn to read then Gendry should as well and is attempting to bully Gendry into attending his lessons with him. 

Tormund would probably find that funny. He wishes he knew what Tormund thought about them trying to forge new Valyrian steel, about Gendry, about anything at all. 

He’s eating his way through some boiled eggs and bacon when he notices a girl crouched beside Ghost. She’s small and slight, with brown hair tied out of her face. 

She’s talking to Ghost and running a hand down his flank. 

He thought he knew all the people in the camp brave enough to even approach Ghost, never mind get close enough to actually touch him, but this girl—another wolf prowls out from between two tents, large with a white chest and a grey back. 

This wolf’s too big. Not anywhere close to Ghost’s size but far, far too big to be just a wolf or a large dog. 

He drops his bowl of food to the ground and, dazed, begins walking towards the girl, towards the two direwolves. 

He crouches down beside the girl and scratches Ghost behind his ears. “Arya,” he says, voice thick and heavy with tears. 

“I thought you might know me,” she says. There are tears in her eyes as well and when one of them falls, she catches it with a finger and stares at it for a moment, confused. 

“Of course I know you,” he says. “You’re my sister.” 

She frowns, then throws her arms around him. He falls onto his arse on the snow covered ground, the cold and wet soaking quickly through the layers of his clothing. He barely notices, just wraps his arms around Arya and prays hard, thanking the old gods, the new, R’hllor, anyone who might have been listening. 

 

Sansa meets them in the courtyard, running straight towards them with the kind of speed he was fairly certain well-bred ladies weren’t supposed to be able to manage. She and Arya clutched at each other for a long time, Sansa’s red hair tumbling down Arya’s back and Arya’s hands gripping tight to the back of Sansa’s dress. Nymeria sits beside Sansa, pressing herself up against the back of her legs. 

He herds the two girls inside sooner than any of them would have liked, Sansa is dressed far too lightly for the biting cold. He places a blanket around Sansa’s shoulder, then goes down to the kitchen to get some mint tea and food sent up. When he comes back, the sisters are sitting on the floor in front of the fire with the blanket wrapped around them. They are smiling, their heads bent together. 

Sansa smiles so rarely that the sight of it brings a smile to his own face. Arya’s smile, too. He can’t imagine Arya has had much cause to use it all these years either. “Somebody from the kitchen is going to send up some tea and food for us.” 

“Somebody should get Rickon,” Sansa says, preparing herself to rise to her feet. 

“I had a message sent that he should join us when his lessons with the Maester are finished.” He goes to sit on one of the chairs by the sisters, but Sansa instead shifts closer to Arya and offers up a corner of the blanket. He grabs a second blanket before he slips down onto the floor with them and the three of them wrap themselves up in the two blankets. Arya’s head rests on his shoulder, Sansa’s bent legs resting against his and her body leaning against Arya. Nymeria had been sitting between the girls and the fire but now tries to wiggle her massive body in between Sansa and Arya to get into the middle, where there wasn’t room for half of her never mind all of her. 

Sansa giggles, a girlish noise Jon wasn’t certain she could produce anymore, and wraps her arms around Nymeria’s neck, cooing nonsense at her quietly. 

The door opens and Rickon barrels through, his hair and clothes a mess. He stops and stares at the three of them. 

He frowns. 

“It’s Arya,” Sansa says, looking at Rickon beseechingly. 

Rickon looks to the side, frowning. He doesn’t remember. Jon’s heart sinks and he isn’t sure who to comfort, who to reach for. 

Arya stands and walks over to Rickon. Even with him being so young, he’s as tall as she is short, her hair tame and his wild, his eyes a pale blue and hers a dark grey. Despite all this, they share a nameless something, a wildness that Jon didn’t have and couldn’t truly understand. “A person is made from more than memory,” she says, and then goes up onto her tippy toes so she can wrap her arms around him in a firm, strangling hug. After she’s stepped away, she says, “Don’t worry. I know you’re my brother and we’ll work on the rest.” 

Rickon smiles, wide and bright. “Yes,” he says. “Yes.”

 

They have dinner in the great hall. It’s hardly a feast, but it isn’t the austere meals they’ve been eating of late either. With all the siblings at the high table, there is truly only room for Robert Arryn and Littlefinger. Sansa sits at the end of the table with Arya, spending most of the meal talking with her and Rickon, who sits on the other side of Arya. 

Robert Arryn isn’t as difficult to make conversation with as he’d feared. Littlefinger, however, is a problem. He keeps interrupting, keeps pointedly referring to Jon as ‘Snow’, keeps trying to make sure that Robert Arryn only truly listens to him. 

The boy’s spoiled and bad tempered but he doesn’t seem cruel, not the way that Joffrey Baratheon had. Or he doesn’t seem cruel yet. Who knows what Petyr Baelish could do to a boy if given enough time and secrecy and influence? Robert Arryn isn’t a healthy boy and Sansa claims he never has been, that sometimes he has fits and that he grows sick easily. Perhaps such a thing made him easier to influence, or perhaps not. He’s a boy and an orphan, in need of protection and guidance, but all he has is Littlefinger. 

Jon tries not to speculate too much on what Littlefinger might want, or even what he might do. He can only deal with it when it happens, though he suspects a more wily man would manage better. 

Arya abandons the high table not long after she’s finished eating her dinner, heading down to where the servants are sitting. Perhaps more accurately, she heads down to where Gendry’s sitting. She squeezes between him and another of the blacksmiths, settling herself down on the hard bench. 

He’s bowed over his plate, quiet and severe. It takes her less than thirty seconds to go from smiling and pleased to snarling and angry. She struggles to get up off the crowded bench and when she stands, she leans down to hiss something at him and storms out of the hall. 

Gendry turns to watch her leave, his face heavy with longing. The ache Jon has been carrying around since his argument with Tormund gets heavier and he presses a hand against his chest. He knows that feeling. 

He loves her, but Gendry knows how little that means. 

Jon knows how little that means. 

 

Jon’s watching Arya and Rickon in Winterfell’s courtyard when the guard’s horn is blown twice—unknown riders approaching. Rickon looks up and Arya slams the flat of her sword up against the side of his head. “Focus!” she says. “Distraction means you’re dead.” 

At some point after she arrived, Arya took over Rickon’s training. Jon’s never seen a tougher teacher, not even bloody hateful Alliser Thorne. 

If Thorne’s tactics had made his students hate him, Arya’s didn’t seem to have the same effect. She’s exceptionally harsh and Rickon often leaves his training sessions limping and covered in welts and bruises, but she does dole out the occasional bit of praise, all the more valued for being so rare. Her methods are effective as well—he’s growing quicker and more deadly far faster under her tutelage than he had under Tormund and Ser Davos. 

He heads up to the top of Winterfell’s walls, where the guards are staring out at the group of riders heading slowly towards them. There can’t be more than a hundred of them. 

The raven had arrived from King’s Landing arrived weeks earlier. There had been two letters, one addressed to Rickon Stark, Warden of the North and Lord of Winterfell, and another addressed to Jon Snow, this one written in Daenerys’ own hand. 

He had explained his dreams to Sansa, faltering and awkward, and tried to explain who Daenerys was to him and she had stared at him silently for a long time, eyes wide and mouth opening and closing like a fish. “I suppose that is hardly the most astonishing thing,” she had finally said. “I should have asked about your dreams before, when you said you dreamt of your mother.” 

Lord Royce arrives at top of the wall only moments before Sansa, with Littlefinger following a few minutes later. He speaks to Sansa softly, smirking and every so often glancing over at Jon and then at Sansa as though it meant something. When Sansa looks over at him he tries to smile at her and she smiles back, such a genuine and warm look that it softens his faltering smile into a real one. 

Her eyes flick to Littlefinger and then back to Jon. 

He tilts his head and looks at Littlefinger. 

They need him. 

He looks out at the men riding towards them, one of them holding the red and black Targaryen banner, another Highgardens, another Dornes. He looks at Lord Royce, who’s smiling just a little out at the approaching riders. 

No, he thinks. We don’t need him. Not anymore. 

 

It’s only a week after they saw the forward riders from atop the wall that the main bulk of Daenerys’ army arrives. It’s astoundingly large. Tormund’s standing at the top of the wall with Rickon and Ser Davos, watching all these men approach. “Once,” Tormund says. “I would have said there weren’t that many men in all the world. Wouldn’t have thought there were that many horses either.” 

Rickon shifts closer to Tormund. “What if they’re like the Boltons? Or the Umbers? Or the Karstarks?” 

“Well, some of them probably are,” Ser Davos says. “But the Targaryen queen sent Jon that dragon didn’t she?” 

“I guess,” Rickon says. 

Jon wants to approach, wants to stand on Tormund’s other side or to place a hand on Rickon’s shoulder and to tell him—to lie to him, Jon supposes. He wants to say, "It’ll be alright." Wants to tell him, "And even if it isn’t, what are dragons for but to burn your enemies?" 

Instead, he heads down to the courtyard where Sansa is huddled with Littlefinger. Littlefinger smirks when he sees Jon, but Jon just raises a hand in greeting and moves to stand with Lord Royce. 

If it were warmer, he would have the household out to greet the Queen, just as Father had done for Robert Baratheon, but it’s snowing and so cold that even people huddled around fires have to keep moving to keep the feeling in their limbs. 

He watches Tormund descend the steps from up high, trying to look and not look all at once. Ser Davos moves to stand beside Jon, and says quietly, “There are Lannister banners among her army.” 

“Are you sure?” 

“Yes.” 

Jon frowns. “The rumours are true then. The Imp rides with her.” 

He’d liked Tyrion Lannister once, thought of him as a friend, but that was a lifetime ago. 

These Lannister's are his enemies and he won’t do them the favour of forgetting it. Some murdered his family, another married his sister with a knife to her throat.

These aren’t things a man forgets.

They gather in the courtyard as the Queen and her retinue approach, Rickon in the middle with Jon and Sansa either side. Littlefinger, Lord Arryn and Lady Mormont stand at Sansa’s other side; Arya, Lord Royce, Ser Davos and Tormund at Jon’s. Directly behind Rickon is Lord Manderly and Lord Glover, the rest of the Northern Lords spread out in a cold and irritated line. 

The forward riders stand behind them, off to the side. They keep trying to edge in front of the Northerners, but every time they do, Sansa clears her throat or Lord Glover starts talking about guests and Southron manners in a very loud voice. 

Daenerys sits atop a magnificent silver horse, only shades off the colour of her own hair. As the procession draws closer, he sees Tyrion Lannister riding beside her, and another man with the Northern look who Jon doesn’t recognise. Lord Manderly steps up close to his back and says, “That’s Jorah Mormont, he tried to sell poachers as slaves to cover his debts and was sentenced to death by your Lord Father.” 

His eyes flick down to Rickon and then over to Sansa, to see if they had heard the message. Rickon is scowling hard enough that he heard for sure and Sansa gives a very small nod. 

A large half-circle of Lords and Dothraki and Unsullied and her Queensguard in their white clocks are all gathered around Daenerys, many of them trying to press as close as possible. When she steps down from her horse, one of them is so close that a Dothraki man reaches out and pulls the reins of the man’s horse and snarls at him in a language Jon neither knows nor recognises. 

Wherever there’s royalty, there are fools. It had been the case with Stannis Baratheon as well, though he was a man who tolerated them even less well than Daenerys did. 

She flicks an irritated look at the man who had almost run her down, who’s now struggling to get off his horse fast enough to get a prime position near the queen. Jon tries not to smile, but doesn’t quite manage it. 

He expects her to at least greet Rickon before she does him, if not Sansa as well. He may be a King’s regent, but he’s a bastard and certainly not the boy who all the correspondence has pointedly called ‘the Warden of the North’. Instead, she embraces him, squeezing him tight enough that he struggles for a moment to breath around the evidence of her surprising strength. 

When she steps back, some tears have frozen to her eye lashes and she’s smiling, wide and silly. She takes his hands and says softly, “It’s so good to finally see you with my actual eyes. I’m only sorry it didn’t happen sooner.” She squeezes his gloved hands, her eyes never straying from his. 

Jon’s the one with tears in his eyes now, and he blinks hard to banish them before they can fall or freeze on his eyelashes as proof as hers did. 

She steps back and then offers her hand to Rickon, who takes it, bows and kisses it. He doesn’t quite manage to make it looks effortless, but he also doesn’t fall over, which did happen a few times when he was practising. “Your Grace,” he says. 

“Lord Stark,” she says. “We have brought the bones of your murdered brother back to Winterfell, so he may rest with your kin where he belongs. You may consider them a gift.” 

Rickon rocks back on his heels, glancing over at the Sansa and Jon. One of her Unsullied steps forward and offers Rickon a bundle wrapped in thick cotton. Sansa carefully pulls aside some of the fabric so she can get a peek inside, then lets it fall back into place almost immediately. She struggles for breath for a moment. then she turns and asks one of the Mormont men standing with their lady to take the bones inside and to leave them in her solar. 

Once the man is out of sight, Sansa clears her throat and begins to introduce all the Lords of the North, but when she gets to Lady Mormont, Daenerys interrupts, “Ah! Your lord must be my most loyal knight, Jorah Mormont.” She motions Jorah forward and he comes to stand beside her. 

Perhaps Jon should have warned her about Lyanna Mormont. 

Lady Mormont stands as tall as she can, back straight and chin up and then spits at Jorah’s feet. Jon does not doubt that if she could have reached his face, she would have spat at that instead. “No,” she says. “He brought shame on our house and shame on my uncle, his Lord Father.” She steps closer to him, her tiny body trembling with rage. Daenerys’ Queensguard don’t seems to know what to do, don’t seem to know whether the Queen needs to be protected from the tiny Lady of Bear Island. “That you think to return here proves that it’s only others who have felt that shame. If you think to ever set foot on Bear Island again, Jorah Mormont, you should think again. If I could strip your name from you, I would."

Lyanna Mormont turns and strides away. Daenerys herself couldn’t have looked more like a queen. 

Jorah watches her go, longing on his face. Jeor Mormont had looked like that when he spoke of Bear Island, of his sister and his nieces. Those few times he had ever mentioned his son it was never so simple as longing. 

"Well, Lord Jorah," Daenerys says, smiling. "At the very least I understand you far better now. Are all the women in your family like that?"

Before Jorah can respond, before anyone can speak of the women of Bear Island without anything other than the respect they deserve, Jon says, "She's the only one left, Your Grace. Her mother and her sisters went South with King Robb and didn’t return. One of her sisters died in battle. The rest died at the Red Wedding." 

Both their smiles have fled.

"You must understand. It’s the only story you will hear here, and you will hear it over and over and over again."

Jorah has gone pale and struggles for composure and dry eyes and words. "Excuse me, Your Grace,” he says, and leaves. He heads straight inside Winterfell, head down and pace quick.

Daenerys nods and her eyes settle for a moment on Rickon, before returning to Jon. She moves close to him and says in a low voice not meant to be overheard, “I cannot allow the North independence. It’s only strength that will allow me to lead us through the long night.” 

“You will find us reasonable,” Sansa says, equally softly. “So long as you are the same.” 

 

“Jorah Mormont is one of my most loyal supporters,” Daenerys says. Jon, Rickon, Sansa, Tormund and Ser Davos are sitting opposite her on one of the long tables in the great hall. Tyrion Lannister, Varys and Jorah Mormont sit beside Daenerys. “He must be—he _is_ the Lord of Bear Island. I have pardoned him for his crimes and that is the end of it.” 

“Is it?” Rickon says. 

How difficult would it be to elbow Rickon in the side without appearing to actually do so? Sansa would probably be able to manage it.

“ _Yes_ ,” Daenerys says. 

"You met Lady Mormont,” Rickon says. “Perhaps in the South people give their word with little thought and less consequence. It’s not so here. Do you think Lady Mormont is in the habit of saying things she doesn't mean? You think you can sway her mind with any ease? If Jorah Mormont wishes to return to Bear Island, perhaps they will allow him to do so when he’s dead, so he can be with in death those he disgraced in life. Or perhaps not. His father received no such privilege, nor did his aunt or his cousins, and they were all _honourable_ members of their house." Rickon's face is hard, his voice strong and firm, things that would have been more effective if he were not very recently thirteen.

One day, Rickon will be a man grown and other grown men will stare into his hard, unwavering face and tremble, but those days are still ahead of him. 

Not too far ahead of him though. The grown men and women who sat opposite him were eyeing him with no small amount of nervousness, not so much for the boy he is now as for the man he could become. 

Daenerys sighs. “I thought you Northerners weren’t supposed to be among those given to grand speeches.” 

“I think you’ll find we’re all sorts here, Your Grace,” Sansa says. 

“I wouldn’t want this to hold up the negotiations, Your Grace,” Jorah Mormont says. “It can be dealt with later.” 

“If you’re sure,” Daenerys says, and Jorah nods. “The relationship between our Houses is…a complicated one. Your father—Eddard Stark—rebelled against mine, who was the lawful king.” She says Father’s name as though it’s an unpleasant one, as though it’s a hard name for her to even utter. Even Rickon, who doesn’t remember Eddard Stark at all, and Sansa, who so rarely makes an expression she hasn’t permitted herself to make, grimaces at her tone. 

“The lawful king,” Jon says softly. 

“Yes. The _lawful king_. My father. Your grandfather. Our kin.” 

They stare at each other for a long time, unblinking. 

He’d thought it might be like this, that he and Daenarys would meet and discover that their interests couldn’t co-exist. They’d grown up together, shared dreams of playing in the courtyard at Winterfell, and at a house with a lemon tree near the window and the sun burning down with a heat he never knew in the North. 

Perhaps there was a reason those dreams ended when they did, and that they only reappeared when he rose. His death had been natural, his rise not. Perhaps that meant that the dreams they shared now were unnatural, an aberration, an extension of something that had already reached it’s natural end. 

Like him. The breathe turns rotten in his chest, trying to choke him with the force of the unnaturalness of his very existence. 

“Your father _murdered_ my uncle and my grandfather. My grandfather asked for a trial by combat and your father gave it to him. The Mad King said that fire would be his champion and so he burned Rickard Stark, while my uncle watched, bound at the throat with a device that tightened and tightened and tightened the more he struggled. But what else could he do but struggle? His father was dying before him, screaming and burning and watching his son die. Watching his son watch _him_ die.” 

Daenerys stands and everyone else scrambles to their feet. Jon remains seated, staring up at her face. Like Jon’s own, it has little natural colour but what little it has has fled. Combined with her silver hair, it left her looking washed out and ill. 

He finally stands and steps away from the table. “And when he was done with all that, with burning a Lord of Winterfell and his heir, he sent a message to Jon Arryn: send me Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark, to die as Rickard and Brandon Stark did. They were guests in his home, he had served them bread and salt. All those who break guest right are doomed and he loved those boys besides, as I love my brothers and my sisters. Perhaps you thought the Usurper was a man who went to war against your father because he wanted to be a king, but you have been misinformed. You should find yourself more honest men, who will tell you the truth. A queen needs to know the truth, even if her advisors don’t wish to speak it. Even if she doesn’t wish to hear it.” 

He leaves the great hall and at his back Daenerys lets out a scream of rage, as deep and piercing a sound as any that he has heard Rhaegal let out. He hears something heavy clatter, crash and bang but he doesn’t turn to look. 

Rickon and Sansa fall into step beside him and when Tormund catches up with them, he says with surprising good cheer, “I like her. She turned one of those massive tables over all by herself! A tiny woman like that! I suppose that’s what they mean by the blood of the dragon. I was wondering.” 

 

Days later, Daenerys comes to him in the Free Folk camp, Rickon, Arya, Sansa, Lady Brienne and Lady Mormont trailing after her. The Queen has left all her advisors in Winterfell, accompanied only by her Unsullied guards and Missandei. Even her Queensguard trail far behind her. 

She looks serene, despite the cold and her earlier rage. By all reports she has been in a foul mood, snapping at almost anyone who comes near, surrounding herself with people from before she arrived in Westeros. Even Jorah Mormont, Tyrion Lannister and Varys have struggled to gain access to the Queen. Sansa has said they’ve constantly being turned away by Missandei or Grey Worm, who tell them, “The Queen thinks. When she is done, she will send for you.” 

Jon and his brother and sisters had put Robb’s bones to rest in the crypts below Winterfell. They had sat together, quiet and solemn. It had been strange more than anything. So much had happened and so much time had passed since Robb’s death. Nobody had cried. Jon wasn’t even certain any of them were capable of such a thing anymore. Such a display of grief felt like something other people did now. 

Daenerys stands with him for a long time, staring out at the camp. Somebody has fetched Tormund and he sits by the fire with Rickon, his face severe and unsmiling. Jon has tried to pretend he doesn’t look Tormund’s way whenever he can, that he doesn’t spend time trying to unravel his expressions, the slump of his shoulders. Lady Brienne stands near him, but Tormund hasn’t looked at her or made conversation or even greeted her. 

It’s not a time to be caught up with such things, but his mind refuses to obey. 

“You and I must resolve this,” Daenerys says softly, her words meant just for him. “I have no one I’ve known as long as you. We shared a whole life together before we even saw each other face to face. When I didn’t have even those I should’ve had, I still had you.” For a moment, her voice is choked and sad. She clears her throat and says, “I love you, and I hope I’m not alone in that.” 

“No,” he says. “I love you as well, I do, but I can’t be silent, I must protect my family and all the North. The damage that has been done here— ” He remembers Lord Manderly’s words, when they sat in Father’s solar. He says them to Daenerys now, “The Red Wedding severed all bonds of fealty between the North and the South. When your family have eaten bread and salt with a man and that man murders them, you don’t sit down with those same people again. At least, I wouldn’t. Would you?” 

She shakes her head. “No, I wouldn’t, but I am not the Lannisters or the Boltons or the Freys. We can reform the bonds between the North and the South as we fight this war against the Others.” 

“There must be restitution made,” Sansa says. She stands near Rickon and Tormund, by the fire. Ser Davos and Lady Mormont sit near them, the tiny Lady nearly swallowed by her furs. 

“We brought back the body of your brother from the Twins. Jorah Mormont climbed their walls to retrieve the bones himself.” Lady Mormont lets out a rude, contemptuous snort, which Daenerys ignores. “The Boltons are gone, you saw to that, and the Freys are seeing to their own destruction. There were a dozen heads up on their walls. More. Tywin Lannister is dead. Cercei and Jaime Lannister are dead, all three of Cercei Lannister’s children are dead. Kevan Lannister is dead. The main line of that house is almost gone.” 

“And yet Tyrion Lannister is your Hand,” Jon says. “And technically still husband of my sister, who he married by force.” 

“We can have the High Septon annul the marriage. Tyrion claims it was never consummated.” 

“It wasn’t,” Sansa says softly. “But my second marriage was.” 

“That doesn’t matter. I will command him to do so, and he will. And it wasn’t a marriage Tyrion wanted either,” she says this high handed and irritated, and all the Northerners stare back at her, uncaring. She sighs. “What more could you want?” 

“The North has been devastated by this war and will suffer the worst of the one that is coming,” Sansa says, chin up and voice firm. “Half of Winterfell—more—is burnt ruins. There was once a town where your army pitches its tents. A quarter of the gold that comes out of Casterly Rock every year should go to the North, in recompense for something that can never be repaid.” 

“For how long?” 

“Until there is no more gold in Casterly Rock.” 

Daenerys scoffs. “That’s hardly reasonable.” 

Her voice bland and even, her eyes far away, Sansa says, “When Joffrey cut off our father’s head, that was hardly reasonable. When he forced me to look at our father’s severed head on the wall of the Red Keep, that was hardly reasonable. When he had his Kingsguard beat me, that was hardly reasonable. When he threatened to rape me on my wedding night, to ensure I would carry his bastard, that was hardly reasonable. When Tywin Lannister couldn’t defeat my brother on the battlefield and had him murdered at a wedding, that was hardly reasonable. This is...the least of what is owed.” 

Jon’s stomach lurches and he swallows down bile that had gathered at the back of his throat. He’d hoped...she’d told him the Lannisters weren’t kind to her. He’d hoped that meant something other than what it did. He curls his hands into fists, to try and feel something other than a throbbing pain that radiates down his face from above his right eye. He feels unsteady on his feet, like the world is going hazzy around him. 

Daenerys lets out a low noise filled with quiet rage and walks over to where her Unsullied stand and then back over to them, her strides long and quick and angry. “I know what it is to suffer so,” she says. “And I would know who those Kingsguard were, if you would give me their names. I wouldn’t have anyone who would beat a helpless child spared. I will speak to Tyrion. There should something, somewhere, that says ‘For crimes committed against House Stark, House Lannister did this.’ People should remember.” 

Rickon is pale and clutching at Tormund’s thumb, his hand still dwarfed by Tormund’s much larger one, and Sansa’s eyes are distant and her expression unnaturally mild. Arya is staring at Sansa, her face a stone worn smooth by the tide. 

Jon blinks hard, trying to will the world back into focus, to force breath into his tight chest. 

“Come,” Daenerys says, slipping an arm through his. “Walk with me back to the castle.” He glances back at Tormund and Ser Davos. Tormund has an arm wrapped around Rickon, who now has his face pressed against Tormund’s chest. A Wildling woman stands near Sansa, a hand on her arm. 

“At least til the edge of the camp,” she coaxes, and he gives her a strained smile and follows. 

There are so many armies camped now around Winterfell that they are running out of room. The Dothraki and the Unsullied are camped close together, both meticulously ordered. The Vale army takes up the most space, having spread themselves out when the main competition was the army of the free folk. When the free folk first started making camp after they left the Wall, Jon and Ser Davos had started the long, slow process of teaching Tormund and the other leaders of the free folk the basics of setting up efficient camps. They had not been happy or particularly willing students but it hadn’t taken long for them to realise the wisdom of at least some of the teachings and they had reluctantly fallen in line. The armies of the riverlands and the North were camped so close to each other that they almost appeared one army, which made Jon ache to see. A relic of the War of the Five Kings, he supposes, a closeness fostered not only by Robb and war, but by Lannister betrayal and the wounds that it had born. Dorne was camped near the free folk, so close that Jon could even now see Dornish flags to the right. The armies of the Reach and the westerlands were camped on opposites sides of the castle, the Dothraki and Unsullied camped between them. The Reach and the westerlands take up far more space than necessary, far more concerned with making sure the other army didn’t appear more glorious than they did. Ser Davos and Grey Worm had been assigned the unenviable task of ensuring all the armies got along. 

As they walk, she speaks to him in a quiet, calm voice and he tries to listen, but it’s only when she stops talking that he realises she’s repeating things he already knows. It’s Sansa’s voice he hears, repeating the same words over and over. 

When they reach the edge of camp, she looks at him closely and nods. “You look better. I have to assume that even with the free folk, it isn’t a positive thing to faint in front of one’s troops.” 

“I—did I look that bad?” 

“You did,” she says. “You need not worry about what would have happened had you fainted. My Unsullied would have shielded us from view before I even noticed you were falling.” 

He looks at Grey Worm and the man nods, slow and solemn. “Thank you,” Jon says softly. “All of you.” 

“You are my heart’s brother.” She hesitates. “I have told the Unsullied and the Dothraki to follow you if I fall. If that happens—” He opens his mouth to interrupt but she holds up a hand and he falls silent. “If that happens, you must give the Unsullied the choice to leave if they wish. They are not slaves, not anymore, and I won’t have anyone make them so again.”

He nods. “Yes. Of course.” 

“You will find the Dothraki more difficult. Grey Worm and Lord Jorah will guide you when it comes to them, though Rhaegal will help in terms of them choosing to follow you. They respect strength, but not much else I’m afraid. I have no advice for dealing with Drogon.” She says the last so matter of factly that he laughs. 

“It won’t happen,” he says. The idea makes something in him lurch, makes him feel nauseous and lost. 

“It might,” she says, as gentle as if he were a skittish horse. She holds out a hand and one of the Unsullied steps forward. “Now, I want you to meet somebody. His name is Riti.” Riti is the name of a small yellow flower that blooms all over Westeros and over the Narrow Sea. “He will follow you wherever you go now. You’re my heir, the Prince of Dragonstone—” Jon protests, but she talks over him. “And you’re my heart’s brother, I would have no harm come to you. I have told Riti that he’s to follow you now, as he followed me once. He shall keep your secrets and value your life as though it were mine.” 

He looks over at Riti, who stares solemnly back. He looks back at Daenarys and says, “I suppose there is nothing I can say to convince you I can protect myself.” 

She smiles. “That is not what this is. Countless kings of Westeros have had Kingsguards, do you think they were all incapable of protecting themselves?” 

He scowls at her, then looks at Riti. “Come,” he says. “I shall introduce you to my family.” 

Daenerys laughs at him as he walks away, but he finds he cannot be mad. Only an hour ago he had thought that all was lost, that politics would supersede survival, that _he_ had put politics before survival. He looks over his shoulder and Daenerys is still smiling. 

 

A brazier burns hot in Winterfell’s courtyard and Daenerys sits beside it, covered in so many furs that it looks as though her head simply sits atop them, unattached to her body. Her Queensguard stand about her, but her Unsullied guards, usually her constant companions, are nowhere to be seen. 

He asks about them as he sits beside her and she smiles. “Many of them find this cold very difficult, so I told them my Queensguard will more than suffice for meeting with you.” She places a hand on the centre of her chest and smiles and he mirrors her. She says, “I have never been here before in my life, not truly, yet I remember this courtyard as well as anywhere I have ever lived in all the world. We played here together so often.”

Jon smiles. “You pushed me over and pinched me underneath there.” He points towards one of the recently rebuilt balconies that surround the courtyard. “I was four and I cried.” 

Her smile turns sad. “Viserys used to do that. Push me over. Pinch me til it bruised. You were the one who taught me a better way to treat others, you and Ser Willem Darry. Before he died, Ser Willem protected me from Viserys, but he could only stop what he saw with his own eyes.” 

The Queensguard knight who stands closest is watching them with baffled eyes. Jon wants to smile at the man, to tell him that despite all this talk of remembering places they have never been, they’re not mad, just Valyrian. He places a hand on her back and says, “I don’t think you’re supposed to hug a queen uninvited.” 

She laughs and embraces him. “Outside of family, you’re not supposed to _touch_ a queen uninvited, but you _are_ family. I have been alone in the world too long.” She rests her cheek on his shoulder and whispers, “I missed you when you went away. Viserys was scornful of you, he thought you were made up, but even when I was too old to believe any longer, I so wanted you to be real.” 

His arms tighten around her. “I’m real. I remember the lemon tree outside the window to your bedroom. We tried to climb it so often, but it was a terrible climbing tree. We should have imagined ourselves in the Godswood here in Winterfell. They’re wonderful climbing trees, strong and tall. One summer, where you lived got so hot all we did was lie in the shade and tell stories, do you remember? Yours were always better than mine, I could never tell them right.” 

After she pulls back, she brushes at her wet eyes with her sleeve. Her hand disappears back underneath the furs and he laughs. “Are there any furs left in all of Westeros or do you have them all?” 

“Oh, I have all of them,” she says. “None for anybody else. They shall call me ‘Daenerys the Warm’. Or ‘Daenerys the Bear’.” 

“‘The Queen who took all the furs for herself’,” he says. 

She laughs. “Do you think everywhere in the world is warmer than here?” 

“No. There is still beyond the Wall.” 

“Ah. Of course,” she says wryly. 

He looks into the fire, the flames bright and eerie. “We must discuss the Free Folk,” he finally says. 

“Yes,” she agrees. “We must.” 

“They aren’t like anyone else you will have meet. They don’t follow titles, they follow men.” 

“You.” 

He shakes his head. “No. Tormund Giantsbane is their leader for the moment. You’ve meet him.” 

“The tall red headed fellow, with the beard.” She mimes stroking a long beard with one hand. 

“Yes. They don’t think all that highly of us. They call us kneelers and they don’t mean it as a compliment.” 

She chuckles. “We’ll need a leader to deal with and they can’t change them as often as they like. That would be too hard. And that leader must take an oath to the Crown and to the Starks and must kneel as they do so. I know they will think it doesn’t matter, but it does.” 

“I know.” 

“They can’t be above the law and they must have the same obligations to the Crown as any other Lord or House.” 

“Soldiers.” 

“Yes. I can allow them some…leeway, with the kneeling and such. Not when it comes to oaths of course, but I don’t need them to kneel to me at the slightest provocation. It’s absurd, every time I walk into a room I half expect to see a third of the people in it kneeling already. Some of them do this very strange half-bow, half-kneeling thing.” She attempts to imitate it, but due to her pile of furs it doesn’t end up looking like anything in particular. 

Jon laughs. 

“Don’t laugh! Some of these men are very old, if they fall over they could break something.” 

“Of course, Your Grace,” he says, with mock severity. “I’m so very sorry. I shouldn’t laugh at such men, they have had far too much of that in life. Dignity and severity is what such men need as they age.” 

“By the gods, Jon Snow, have you learned to make a joke? _When_?” 

He shrugs. “Have you seen the new Lord of Highgarden? Ancient, and the most pompous man I think I’ve ever seen. He deserves laughter.” 

“House Tyrell was as devastated by the Lannisters as House Stark. More, really. It’s extinct in the main line. He’s a minor relative with sudden and unexpected importance. I feel a little sorry for him really.” 

“Sudden and unexpected importance.” Jon makes a face. “I was enjoying laughing at him. Why would you do that?” 

She smiles and brushes some snow off her furs. It takes her some time to look him in the face, but when she does she says softly, “I would make you a Targaryen in truth, if you would let me.” Her eyes plead just a little, though no more than would be dignified. 

He shakes his head. He had thought that she would offer, since she insisted he accept her proclaiming him her heir. When he hasn’t been thinking of Lords and alliances and traitors and Tormund, he has been thinking about this. He would rather the certainty of being Eddard Stark’s or even Rhaegar Targaryen’s bastard, than the strangeness of being Rhaegar Targaryen’s true born son. He wishes to know no more of Rhaegar than he does already, and to be his acknowledged son in truth—

He is a Snow. If a Snow is good enough to be brother to Sansa and Rickon and Arya, to be friend to Daeynerys and Gendry and Edd and Sam, for Tormund to take to bed, to be dragonrider to Rhaegal, to be a companion to Ghost, then that is all he needs. 

Fuck the rest of them. 

She sighs. “Prince Jon Snow of House Targaryen?” 

He laughs a little. 

“You will be a prince, that you have no choice about but I would claim you as more than just my brother’s bastard if I could, claim you before all the world. I ask much of you, I know, but you’re my family and my heart’s brother. I’d have no one doubt what you mean to me.” 

He smiles. “I know it should matter. I know that if you die without issue I might regret it, but enough people have decided that I’m something better than I was before. I’m who I’ve always been, and whether or not I’m a bastard doesn’t change that. What’s the difference between a bastard and a true born child? Only the differences we impose on them. Some are good. Some are bad. Most are both, like all of us. When I was younger, I thought the problem was that I was a bastard but it wasn’t. The problem was the way I was treated because I was a bastard.” 

She sighs. “You’re right of course, but don’t go telling people I said that. It would make inheritance very tricky.” 

Jon laughs. 

 

It’s Gendry who gives Rickon the best birthday gift, though he gives it many, many weeks late. It’s a sword, made of freshly forged Valyrian steel. The first few tries had produced swords of very high quality that Jon had passed on to some of the Free Folk, but they hadn’t been Valyrian steel. Even this one is only almost perfect, but it’s problems seem to only be aesthetic ones. From every comparison they have made from this sword to Longclaw and Oathkeeper, it seems as strong and light and remarkable as them. 

“I’m told your father had a longsword that was melted down,” Gendry says, while Rickon examines the sword. “I can try and make another Valyrian steel longsword for House Stark if you like, when I’ve truly mastered the process. This one is—it’s fine, but we can make better. I know we can.” 

“I can swear to the Dragon Queen on Dragonsteel,” Rickon says softly. 

“There is poetry to it,” Sansa says. “Someone should write a song. Perhaps someone _will_ write a song.” 

Arya has both arms crossed over her chest, frown firmly in place. “It doesn’t look right. Ice, Longclaw—they’re different.” She looks Gendry square in the face. “Better.” 

“I already said it isn’t perfect. I just thought—”

“And a good thought it was, Gendry,” Sansa says. She tries to quell Arya with a look, but it works no better now than when they were all children. “Thank you, very much. Say thank you, Rickon.” 

“I haven’t said thank you?” Rickon asks softly, still staring down at sword and holding it carefully in both hands. 

“Not yet,” Sansa scolds gently. 

“Oh. Thank you, Gendry. It’s beautiful.” 

“Not as beautiful as—” Arya begins. 

“Arya,” Jon says softly. 

She glances at him and scowls, but falls silent. 

Sansa stands tall and still in a dress of velvet and silver brocade, her fur cloak thrown on over the top. Inside the great hall it will be too crowded with people to need it, but during winter it’s needed almost anywhere else, even in Winterfell. Before Ramsey Bolton burned the castle, water from the hot springs was piped through the walls and floors of the castle to keep the whole place warm, but the fire had caused a great deal of damage to the castle and it no longer worked quite right. The glass gardens are still heated, still able to produce fruits and vegetables no matter the weather outside, but it’s luck alone to thank for that. The keep and the great hall are only intermittently warm now, as much the result of fires and body heat as anything else. 

Tormund and the free folk wait for another day, but today Rickon Stark swears fealty to Daenerys Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. Jon and Sansa, as Lord and Lady Protector of the North until Rickon comes of age, are to swear fealty as well. 

Rickon goes first, kneeling before the Queen with his sword at his feet and saying the words, loud and clear. 

Perhaps they should have thought more about the consequences of making and unmaking a king so quickly, but fate had been with them or, at least, Lord Manderly and Lord Glover, one to whisper for them and one to shout. People murmur angrily about Ser Jorah Mormont still, but it seems almost exclusively aimed at the man himself. Jon tries not to be too amused about the fact that Ser Jorah can’t find himself a warm meal or unfrozen laundry anywhere in Winterfell, but it’s difficult. 

Jon and Sansa kneel beside Rickon and say the words as well, words of honour and fealty and obedience. They feel pointless and small as he says them, far different from how the words had felt when he’d sworn his oath to the Night’s Watch. 

He’s not swearing to do anything he wouldn’t have done anyway. He would’ve served the North as best he could, have protected Daenerys as best he could, without an oath said before a crowd of gawking fools. 

“Rise,” Daenerys says, smiling. She places a hand on Rickon’s arm. “For all that your family has suffered, for all that you and yours has done and will do in the war to come, I name you Rickon Stark, Lord of Winterfell, and Prince of the North. Shall the North and the South ever be friends and comrades in arms, Prince Rickon, and the North shall always have a place at my table and on my Small Council.” 

Rickon glances over Sansa helplessly. 

“Say thank you,” she says, exasperated. 

“Oh,” Rickon says. “Thank you, Your Grace.” 

Daenerys laughs. “Of course. Grand Maester Marwyn, have you prepared the ravens?” 

“I have, Your Grace,” the Maester says. 

“I proclaim here and now that Jon Snow is the natural born son of my brother Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark.” 

Almost before Daenerys is done speaking, people are whispering amongst themselves, the sound growing louder and louder. One of her Queensguard roars for silence and it takes long enough for the crowd to comply that any pleasure that had been on Daenerys’ face has fled. 

“He’s my kin, my family, and I’ve named him my heir. He’s Jon Snow, the Prince of Dragonstone, and if I die without issue, he will follow me on the Iron Throne. Grand Maester Marwyn has composed letters to be sent to the appropriate places and if I fall in the coming war, I expect each and every person here to swear fealty to Prince Jon as King of the Seven Kingdoms.” 

Sansa’s gaping at him and Rickon’s looking around the room, eyes narrowed. 

Daenerys pauses. “Well. When I say each and every person. Lord Baelish, please step forward.” 

Sansa grasps Rickon’s arm and pulls him over to stand with Arya and Lady Brienne. Jon moves to stand at Daenerys’ shoulder. He and Sansa had whispered together for hours about how to deal with Littlefinger without implicating Sansa herself in the process. 

Arya had suggested that Lord Baelish could simply go to sleep and never wake up. It happens, she had insisted. No one would ever know. 

When Jon had given Daenerys a broad sketch of Lord Baelish, she had simply cocked an eyebrow and given him his instructions. 

Littlefinger glances around at the Lords and the few Ladies who stand and watch, waiting to see what the Dragon Queen will do with this man that no one trusts and just as few like. 

It won’t just be Jon and Sansa and Arya and Rickon celebrating Littlefinger’s fall this evening. 

“I understand you are a thief,” Daenerys says. Murmurs begin travelling the great hall again but this time they don’t irritate the Queen. She simply stares at Littlefinger until the sound dies down, her face calm as a still lake. 

“Your Grace—” Littlefinger says. 

“You cannot defend yourself, Lord Baelish. There’s proof. You’ve covered your tracks very well, it’s true, but it’s impossible to cover them well enough that there are no tracks at all. Stealing from the Crown is High Treason and that was true even when the Usurper was on the throne.” She smiles, a calm and serene thing. 

Two of the Unsullied step out from the crowd and grab ahold of Baelish and force him to his knees. 

“I sentence you to death, Lord Baelish. You shall die in the morning.” 

If Sansa had been gaping at Jon earlier, then the look on Littlefinger’s face has to be something else. It is terror and shock incarnate. “I— _morning_ —a trial—” 

“This is a time of war. Grand Maester Marwyn informs me that I’m permitted to order summary executions for High Treason during such a time.” She looks at the Unsullied who hold Baelish on his knees and says, “Take him to the dungeons. Grey Worm, ensure that only my most trusted men guard him until then. I would hate for him to try and use his ill-gotten gains to escape justice.” 

Sansa watches Baelish be dragged from the great hall until he’s out of sight, his protests only silenced once the doors are slammed behind them. 

“I always knew,” The new Lord of Highgarden says. “Grubby little man, a thief is all he ever was.” 

Sansa smiles. 

“Now,” Daenerys says, motioning Sansa and Rickon forward with one hand. “I believe we have some Arbor Gold, Lord Varys?” 

“We do, Your Grace.” 

“Wonderful. We have much to celebrate.” 

 

Jon tries to ignore the pounding of his head. It’s much improved from when he woke up, but even the pale winter sun feels like spikes piercing his skull if he looks into the light the wrong way. 

This isn’t his first hangover, but it might be his worst. 

Littlefinger is dead. There are other enemies to watch, of that he has no doubt, but Sansa’s free of him and Rickon no longer glowers at every Vale knight he sees. Sansa will no doubt be spending many hours comforting Robert Arryn, but even this doesn’t seem to bother her. 

All the leaders of the free folk are gathered around the main fire in their camp, eating and waiting for Jon to speak. Tormund’s sitting with an old spearwife named Neisa. He’s neither eating nor looking in Jon’s direction and Jon tries to rub away the heavy, sad feeling that has settled in his chest. 

“I have spoken to the Queen on your behalf. You’ll have to speak with her yourself before all is said and done, but we've come to an agreement. Tormund will have to kneel, but only once, when he swears fealty.” 

Tormund makes a disgusted face. 

"She has dragons and she will burn you alive and _feed you to them_ , Tormund,” Jon says, his temper shorter than usual. 

"My people will gut me if I kneel to some southerner queen,” Tormund says. 

"No," one of the Free Folk said. "Rhaegal is terrifying enough. I don't want to be burnt alive. Me, I want to die, _then_ burned. The order is important."

Neisa snorts. “I won’t let that woman take my life from me.” 

“Where else would we go?” another says, flat and dead eyed. “There is nowhere else. I wouldn’t go back Beyond the Wall, to be killed for sure by the White Walkers.” 

Neisa spits at the mans feet. 

"You have to make some sort of agreement with Daenerys,” Jon says. “Don't be fools, this is not Stannis, who needed to appear strong. She _is_ strong and she will crush you beneath the weight of her dragons if she must."

Tormund’s still staring at the ground, frowning.

"So...only Tormund has to kneel and the rest of us...?" 

Neisa laughs. 

“She may call on you to fight for her at some point and you will have to live by the Crown’s laws, but you would have to do that anyway. You would only have to send who you could spare to fight, and even then not all of your fighting men would be needed." It is what it is. Hardly perfect, but the same as any House in Westeros must allow. “Rickon will be your liege lord, but he says he doesn’t care if you kneel when you take that oath.” 

"What about the spearwives?" 

"You can send them if you wish, but you don't have to." 

"And, just so we're clear, it's just Tormund that has to actually kneel?" one of the men says, grinning. 

"Oh fuck the lotta you,” Tormund says heatedly.

Ignoring him, Neisa says, "Well, if it's just Tormund."

"Yes,” Jon says. 

"You're a bunch of horrid shits, every one o' you." Tormund stands, scowling.

"Just cause you're fighting with the Crow—”

"Oh shut it Fin, no one wants to hear from you."

"Oi!"

Tormund walks away from the group, his shoulders tight and his hands pulling angrily at his beard. Jon hesitates for a handful of seconds before he follows. "Tormund—”

"I know I have to do it. I know. I’ve got questions I want answered though. You the one to answer them?"

"I can try,” Jon says softly. 

"So what does this make me?”

Jon blinks, surprised. “Well—the Lord, I suppose."

"And who's Lord after me?"

"Your son."

"I don't have a son,” Tormund says, angry, like this was something Jon should have known.

It _was_ something Jon knew, but he just says, “Then your oldest daughter."

He grimaces. "I need to talk to my people and then I need to talk to someone I can negotiate with."

A sinking feeling settles in Jon's stomach. "Why?" He hopes Tormund knows better than to try and negotiate his way out of the act of kneeling, or the sending of fighting men and women at the Queen’s order.

"That isn't going to work, not for the free folk. You should know us better than that, we don't follow blood, we follow people." Tormund glares as he says it, angry words swallowed down and left unsaid. 

Jon bristles. "You will have to follow her blood."

"I'm not talking about her blood, I'm talking about mine. The free folk won't follow my daughter just because she's my daughter. It will go badly for her and we both know what happens when people don't want to follow someone like that."

They and their children and their spouses and anyone who supports them dies. Jon nods, frowning. "But how—?”

"That's what I need to talk to them about. Buncha fucking useless, clucking chickens, don't know why I'm even bothering." Tormund glares over at the fire where the other leaders of the free folk are still sitting.

"For Munda and Birgitta." Jon has only met Tormund's daughters in passing, but he has seen how he dotes on them, gentle and loving and soft. They are still at the Wall, being watched over by people from Tormund’s village. Munda had been almost old enough to travel to Winterfell with them, but she’d stayed at the Wall to look after Birgitta. 

"Yes.” Tormund scowls. "Better get to it I suppose."

Jon hesitates, almost reaches out to put a hand on Tormund's arm, but by the time he resolves to do it, Tormund has already started walking back to the fire.

 

Sansa doesn’t say much while she embroiders, but Jon doesn’t mind the quiet. When she puts it aside, he expects to be hurried off to bed but instead Sansa leans back in her chair and sighs. “I went to Littlefinger’s execution,” she says. “I just…wanted to be sure he didn’t find a way to weasel out of it.” 

“Of course.” 

“He was beheaded, as Father was.” For a moment, her face goes distant and then she raps her knuckles against the wood of her chair and she returns to the room. 

He cringes a little at her words. “That can’t have been easy, seeing that.” He can’t even imagine it, their noble father brought so low, given a traitors death by a horrid shit of a boy. 

“Not much of anything is easy, Jon,” she says, then smiles. “I’ve been thinking about what people will say about Littlefinger one day. 'He sat on the Small Council of a King and stole from him, for which he received a traitors death.' Do you think they'll remember anything else? Do you think they'll even remember that?"

Jon smiles back. "It doesn't seem likely does it?"

"No. Thinking of all he did to make himself a somebody, it almost makes me feel sorry for him.” She pauses. “Well. Not really. He’ll be forgotten though, which is nice. Didn’t even manage to make himself Hand of a king.” 

“Maybe you could share being Hand of the Queen with Lord Tyrion,” Jon suggests, laughing. 

“Good gods, no. Don’t even say it. I’d go South with you, if you ended up King, but I wouldn’t do it for anyone else.” 

Jon blushes, surprised by her even offering such a thing. “I—thank you,” he says, shocked and sincere. 

“You would need me to protect you,” she says matter of factly. “And to teach you how to survive the lions. Though I suppose most of the lions are dead now.” 

“I knew what you meant,” he says, smiling. 

She shifts in her seat and turns her body towards him. “I’ve been thinking about the Karstarks and the Umbers. They’ve sent no representatives, haven’t even replied to any of our ravens.” 

"Did you expect them to?"

Sansa hums thoughtfully, then says, “Yes and no. It's possible there’s no one to send. It's possible that neither House have a new Lord yet, that all the rivals are still fighting for the title. If they chose not to send someone, that would have been foolish. Better to know than not to know."

"Rickon said Smalljon Umber threw his mother in the dungeon and killed one of his sisters when they tried to stop him taking Rickon and Osha to Ramsey. Do we know how many of his brothers died at the Red Wedding?"

"No. At least one, and he had two.” She holds up two fingers. 

"And there's only Karstark cousins left?"

"Yes." 

“I’ve mentioned them to Daenerys. We’ll have to deal with them before we go to the Wall, we can’t have them turning on us and attacking us from our flank. The Wall is vulnerable from this side. It would be the height of foolishness, but if they think it’s that or death, they might do it anyway.” 

“I remember the first time I met Greatjon Umber. It was the first time I met the Smalljon as well I suppose, but he didn’t make much of an impression. Arya tried to climb the Greatjon like she did Father, do you remember?” 

Jon laughs. “Yes. Lady Stark was mortified but he thought it was funny and Arya got all the way up to his shoulders before Father made her get down.” 

“I remember him being…hard, and a little wild. He frightened me, but I think—I don’t think he was anything like his son. He gave me a carved doll that had been beautifully painted. His wife made them. I wonder what happened to it? Destroyed when Ramsey Bolton burnt Winterfell I suppose. Or before then.” 

“I remember how terrifyingly large the Greatjon was, but I don’t remember much of anything else beyond,” Jon laughs a little. “Arya.” 

“You mustn’t have much of a problem with large men anymore,” Sansa says. “Or you didn’t, anyway. Tormund has been walking around with a cloud over his head and you’ve been far more sullen than usual.” 

“I’m not sullen,” he says, sullenly. 

“You are, but that’s not the important part.” 

Jon doesn’t reply, just looks away from her and thinks about Tormund, about what they had been before he ruined it, before he looked at Lady Brienne and at how Tormund looked at her and remembered every single time he hadn’t been enough, that he’d been overlooked in favour of someone else. Robb had most often been the someone, but sometimes it had been the absence of a someone as much as anything. The mother shaped hole in his life that Lady Stark’s cruelties made larger. He had loved Father. Worshipped him. 

But nobody had ever accused Ned Stark of being particularly demonstrative. It had been servants who sat with him when he was sick, who asked most often how he was doing in his studies and his training, who had doted on him. 

So he’d looked at Lady Brienne, tall and broad and strong, and only seen all the things he wasn’t. If this was what Tormund wanted, if this was what got his heart racing, well, Jon was none of those things. Stand him next to Lady Brienne and, though he wouldn’t admit it aloud, he would look small and delicate and slight.

“Jon?” Sansa says softly. 

“I offended him. I was jealous and I offended him.” 

“Your jealously offended him?” Sansa asks, baffled. 

“No. I told him I was avoiding him so that he could pursue Lady Brienne without awkwardness.” It sounds so absurd now. “It offended him that I thought so little of him.” 

“Oh Jon.” 

He clears his throat and stands, trying to swallow pass the lump in his throat. “I’ll see you in the morning.” 

Sansa grabs his hand and says softly, “It can be fixed, if you want it fixed.” 

He looks away and leaves. 

 

‘It can be fixed’, Sansa had said. 

It isn’t true, surely. Whatever his relationship with Tormund had been, it had been broken for weeks now. Almost two months of stewing in it, of brooding and watching Tormund out of the corner of his eye. 

He takes Sansa’s advice when it comes to most things though. She’s right often enough that it’s worth trying, surely? 

He walks past Tormund’s tent as he always does, straining to hear or see something. Anything. He stops outside and says softly “Tormund?” When he pushes the flap back, the tent is empty. He steps backwards, his back coming into contact with a firm chest, the back of his head knocking against someone’s chin. 

“You need something, Jon Snow?” Tormund says. 

He looks up and gets a face full of Tormund’s beard. He turns around and says, “I just…wanted to speak to you. If you’re tired, it can wait.” 

Tormund shakes his head and steps around Jon to go inside his tent and Jon follows. 

It’s strange, being here and not being allowed to step into Tormund’s space, to smile up at him and get a kiss just by tilting his head. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “And I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to say it. I just—I was stupid. I’m sorry.” 

Tormund doesn’t say anything, just watches him and frowns. “What do you want?” he finally says. 

“I don’t know,” he admits. 

“You want me to tell you I think Brienne is anything other than magnificent?”

Jon flinches. 

“It would be a lie, but I could. You want me to tell you I love you?" Jon's head jerks up, staring up into Tormund's face. "That one would be true. It's stupid, but it's true. Incredibly stupid. I’ve never been too bright you see, but falling in love with a man I can't keep and who's certain he isn't going to survive the coming war is a new low, even for me." 

"You can keep me,” Jon says softly.

"You're brother to a Lord. Nephew to a Queen. Son to a prince. A dragonrider. The man who was sent to save us all from the dark. _I_ can keep you? You don't even think you're going to be here to be kept." Tormund turns and leaves.

If only he'd sounded angry, Jon thinks. If only it didn't sound as though he was only speaking truths he had long grown resigned to. 

Jon returns to his own tent and doesn’t sleep. 

 

Jon sits underneath Rhaegal’s wing, brooding. The words ‘you want me to tell you that I love you’ run around his head, wonderful and terrible and confusing. Before, he’d thought it a simple thing, that he could apologise and explain and everything would be as it was. He could find shelter and comfort in Tormund from the coming winter, could live with something like contentment til he died. 

It hadn’t even occurred to him how difficult it would be to watch somebody you cared about be certain that death is coming for them. He’s yet to shake the feeling that death had settled on him when the knives entered his flesh, that every breath he takes is stolen and must be paid for in the end. 

He’s spoken to Daenerys of Gendry, of the Usurper’s bastard son who is forging them Valyrian steel, mixing his blood and sweat and whatever it is that makes spells work at all into iron to make them weapons to fight against the Others. She had flipped through his little book of notes about his dreams, stopping to run her fingers over ‘one of my ancestors loved a blacksmith’ before she handed it back. “I am jealous,” she’d said, a small smile on her lips. “I have never visited Old Valyria, not even in my dreams. You’ve been so often you brought back something long thought dead.” 

“And you returned dragons to the world. Without dragon fire, there’s no Valyrian steel.” 

She had let out a quiet sound of agreement, but it had taken him almost an hour to convince her Gendry meant her no harm. Once he had done that, she wanted to meet him. “If he means me no harm,” she had said. “Then I should meet him. We are kin. Do you know how little kin I have left?” 

He had tried everything to convince her otherwise, but he had failed. _His father killed your brother!_ \- Well, he was your father and you have no issue with it. - _His father rewarded those who killed your niece and nephew!_ \- And _your_ siblings. 

He crawls out from underneath Rhaegal’s wing, straightens and tries to pretend that he wasn’t hiding from the world like a child. “I have promised not to hurt him,” Daenerys says as they approach the spot in the free folk camp where Gendry has set up his workshop. “I don’t see what else I can offer to soothe your nerves.” 

Jon huffs. “I am not a maiden before her bedding, Daenerys. My nerves don’t need soothing.” 

“Of course they don’t,” she says, soothingly. 

“Oh shut it,” he says, as they stop just out of range of Gendry swinging his blacksmith’s hammer. 

They watch and wait and Jon wonders if it really can’t be interrupted or if Gendry is enjoying keeping the royals waiting. If Jon were in his position, he’d probably at least want to. 

When Gendry turns to them, putting aside the sword he’d been working on, he’s flushed and sweating. The dragon fire, lit by Rhaegal and stocked up again by her throughout the day, burns far hotter than any fire born only of sparks and flame and wood and, even in the cold of a Northern winter, the work and fire is clearly enough to make a man hot. 

He’s wearing only a Blacksmith’s apron over trousers. He takes off the apron and wipes himself down with a towel before putting on a shirt and holding a clock made of sheepskin in one hand. Daenerys is smiling, eyes dark and hooded and appreciative. When she looks his way, he rolls his eyes and she shrugs, unrepentant. 

The three of them sit around the dragon fire, sipping tea that one of the Queensguard had brought them. Riti stands just out of Jon’s eye line, as suspicious and testy as ever. “What do you know of your father?” she asks Gendry. 

He shrugs. “His name. That he wasn’t a man you choose to have for a father, if a man got to choose, which he doesn’t.” 

Daenerys sips her tea, watching him with knowing eyes. She takes a long time to speak. “Some would say he would make a very good father, with all he could have left you.” 

Gendry laughs. “No. What did he leave his true born children? A rotten kingdom. Early deaths.” 

“Robert Baratheon had no true born children,” Jon says. “Only bastards.” 

“People do say that,” Gendry says. “But people say a lot of things.” 

“I’ve heard it from Lord Tyrion’s own mouth,” Daenerys says. “And he claims to have heard it straight from the Kingslayer. I would say it’s as true a thing as any of us might hear.” Daenerys’ voice was calm, but it seemed close to not. 

“If I could pick a father,” Jon says, suddenly. “It wouldn’t be the one that I have.” 

She looks shocked. 

“It isn’t—I’ve heard some good things about Rhaegar, of course. That he was a scholar, a warrior, a poet. But in my dreams, all he does is demand my Northern mother stay in Dorne, where it’s hot and she’s far from her family, where there wasn’t a Maester and,” he swallows, blinking back the tears that burn his eyes. “She died there. All my life, all I have wanted is a mother who would love me and she did, I know she did, and maybe it was him who took her away. It was me, too, I know, but—”

Daenerys wraps an arm around his shoulders and rests her head against his. “It wasn’t you that killed her and, even if it was, she loved you. Do you think she’d have chosen differently?” 

“Yes,” he says, choking on the word, on the feeling clawing its way up and out of his chest. “Yes. Her father and brother were dead, what am I to that?” 

“Everything,” she whispers. “I promise you, everything. My son was dead inside me before he was born and I’d burn the whole world down if I thought it would return him to me. I never held him in my arms, never heard him cry, and I loved him still.” 

Gendry grips Jon’s knee. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I lost my mother when I was very young. She was…” He smiles. “Beautiful. I wish I remembered more.” 

Daenerys places her hand over Gendrys and whispers, tears clinging to her voice, “Be my Orys Baratheon, Gendry. Be my loyal and true kin.” 

“You have Jon for that,” he says, soft and uncertain. 

“No one can have too many loyal and true kinsmen,” she says, pulling a handkerchief out of a pocket and dabbing at her eyes. “There is no Lord of Storm’s End. The line is dead through the right side of the blanket, so I look to you. We’re kin, you and I, and I have so little of it. Be my family, Gendry. You can be that without being the Lord of Storm’s End, of course, but it’s hard to be queen and see a blacksmith socially.” Still dabbing at her eyes, she laughs at her own joke and smiles at Gendry, inviting him to share in it.

Jon’s eyes widen. Of course. That the stormlands were leaderless should have occurred to him—they weren’t _here_. Daenerys had rode North before dealing with them and maybe it was some prophetic instinct that had made her do so. 

Gendry takes her hand in his and grips it tightly. “Can I think about it?” he says, very quietly, but he smiles back at her as he adds, “I would like a family. I can’t remember ever having one.” 

“Of course you can think on it.” She smiles, then presses a hand on the middle of Jon’s back. “Princes don’t slouch. Back straight, shoulders back, chin up. The chin must be up just enough that you can look down your nose at anyone, even a man who towers over you.” She demonstrates for them and Jon laughs and tries to imitate her. 

 

He finds Tormund waiting in his tent, sitting in the only chair and frowning. He wears his usual clothes, his new cloak thrown over the back of the chair. 

Jon lets the flap fall shut behind him. Hope would be silly here, but hope appears anyway. “Tormund?” 

“Ah,” Tormund says. “I was waiting for you.” 

Tormund holds out a hand and Jon heads straight to Tormund, going past the offered hand and pressing himself up against Tormund’s side and burying his face in Tormund’s bright red hair. “I love you,” he murmurs. 

“Aye,” he says, wrapping an arm around Jon. “I love you too. That’s the hard bit. I don’t want to watch you die and I want to watch you die slowly, bit by bit, even less.” 

“I know. I don’t want to die. I have so much now. I had you. I have Sansa, Rickon, Arya, Daenerys. All these people I thought dead and lost forever, but they weren’t dead were they? I was dead. Truly dead. And there was nothing. I didn’t see my mother or my father—either of my fathers—or even feel anything but…nothing. I brought that nothing back with me, do you understand? Maybe it was the dying that did it, or maybe it was the returning from death but I left something there or—took something with me.” 

“No, Jon Snow, you didn’t.” 

Jon scowls. “I _did_.” 

“You changed,” he said, gently. “You went through something unimaginable and you changed. That’s all.” 

“ _All_?” It had been more than ‘all’, surely. 

“Yes. Perhaps you thought people as permanent and unchanging as a mountain but we’re not. I’m different than I was when I met you. I had to leave things behind to become who I am now, a man who would kneel to a queen to save his people. Who would love a crow. Would suffer to think of a crow dying or courting death.” 

Jon smiles. “Oh. I love you,” he repeats, and Tormund chuckles. “Can I kiss you?” Jon asks softly. 

Tormund pulls away and tilts his head up, so he can catch Jon’s lips with his own. The kiss is soft and soothing and gentle and Jon relaxes into it, his body pressing down onto Tormund, pressing _close_. He has missed him so much, missed this closeness so much. 

The chair creaks and Jon freezes. 

Tormund snickers. “‘But _how_ did you fall Tormund Giantsbane? Well Jon Snow decided he didn’t want to stand on his own and so the chair collapsed’.” 

“Oh be quiet,” Jon says, pushing his weight back onto his own feet. 

Tormund tries to pull him back, saying, “No, no, that didn’t mean go.” He’s smiling and Jon kisses him because it’s been so long since he saw that smile, that smile he used to see so often that he hadn’t valued it enough. 

Jon has to step back when Tormund stands, but he swallows a laugh when Tormund puts one hand each under Jon’s thighs, right near his knees and picks Jon up, Jon wrapping his legs around Tormund’s waist and his arms around his neck. “I’ve missed you,” he whispers, forehead resting against Tormund’s. “I’ve missed you so much.” 

“I thought you might,” Tormund whispered back. “Ghost has been sleeping at my back at night and dogging my steps during the day.” 

“Oh gods. That’s _embarrassing_.” Jon drops his head onto Tormund’s shoulder and tightens his legs around Tormund’s waist. 

“A little.” Tormund grins as he sets Jon down on his bed of furs and settles atop him. “It was good. Reminded me, maybe you cared more than it seemed.” 

Jon frowns. “I love you. I loved you and if it seemed like anything else—”

“I know. You’re a silly Southerner who can’t express a feeling without it looking as though you have no feelings at all.” 

“Not true,” Jon says and kisses him, burying his fingers in Tormund’s hair. 

Tormund’s tongue licks it’s way into Jon’s mouth and Jon shivers, arches up against Tormund’s body. He tries to line his cock up with Tormund’s. He gasps and shudders at the weight of Tormund’s body against him, holding him down, at the friction of his own clothing rubbing against sensitised skin. His cock is rubbing more against Tormund’s stomach now, but that’s good too. 

He pulls at Tormund’s clothes, trying to get his top layer of furs up and over his head without—without doing what he needs to do to remove the furs. Tormund laughs and leans back and pulls furs and fabric over his head in one smooth action. Jon starts pulling off his own clothes, undoing buckles and buttons with little finesse and a great deal of impatience. He discards his jerkin and his layers of woollen undershirts, toeing off his boots and shucking his pants with a great deal of wiggling. 

Tormund, who’s already naked, jerks two of the furs out from underneath Jon. Jon reaches for him and Tormund lays down and settles the furs over them. “You warm enough?” he asks. Tormund tries to pull one of the furs around Jon’s shoulders. 

“No,” Jon says. “I think you should come down here and keep me warm.” He tugs at the furs on Tormund’s back, pulling him closer. 

Tormund laughs. “You have any idea how many people have used that awful line in this camp?” 

“Well, if it works.” Jon blushes and, when Tormund lays atop him again, sighs and tries to get Tormund to settle between his legs again. 

“You like that I’m bigger than you hmm? Like that you can feel it when I’m on top of you? That I’m big and you’re small and delicate?” 

Jon buries his face in Tormund’s chest, his face going redder and redder. “I’m not delicate.” 

“Aren’t you?” Tormund asks, running his fingertips down Jon’s side. “The thought that I would leave you for someone else sent you mad. And look at you. So pretty. Aren’t pretty things delicate?” 

“I’m not pretty _or_ delicate,” Jon says. 

“Really? I’m not convinced,” Tormund says, laughing. He brushes his lips against Jon’s neck, his beard rubbing against his neck and chest. 

Jon stares up at the ceiling of the tent, wondering how to say ‘you make me feel like somebody worth loving’ that doesn’t sound pathetic. There probably isn’t a way to say it that doesn’t sound pathetic so he doesn’t say anything, just takes Tormund’s hand and puts it on his hip. He slips his fingers between Tormund’s and digs them in, hard as he can. “I’m not delicate. Maybe you forgot.” 

Tormund grins. His fingernails dig into Jon’s hip and then up his side. Even though he knew it was coming, Jon still gasps and arches his back. 

“Maybe not delicate,” Tormund says. “Pretty, though.” 

Jon kisses him again and again, wraps his arms around Tormund’s head and wraps his legs tightly around Tormund’s waist. He gasps and moans when Tormund’s hands grab a hold of his arse and squeeze, fingertips and fingernails digging in. “Leave a mark, leave a mark,” he gasps, pulling on Tormund’s hair. 

Tormund’s left hand digs in, hard, and Jon leans into it, pressing down into the feeling. 

A finger presses against his entrance, slick with oil, and keeps pressing down, towards the left hand still digging in and the right slipping inside him. “You came with oil,” Jon says, gasping and laughing right up against Tormund’s ear, Tormund’s beard brushing against his chin. “Confident were we?” 

“Ha,” Tormund says. “Like you weren’t ready and willing the other night.” 

Jon blushes, because that was true, and moans a little as a second pushes inside. “Well if you’d been more cooperative—”

Tormund laughs and drags the nails of his free hand across Jon’s arse, before digging them into the meat of it again when he’s done. “Maybe I’ll work on the other one when I’m inside you,” he says. “And your arse can be one big bruise tomorrow and every time you see Brienne, think about _that_.” He brings his lips close to Jon’s ear. “My hands on your arse, my cock inside you.” 

Jon moans. “Yes, yes, every time I fucking _move_.” A third finger and Jon pulls on Tormund’s beard and says, “Come on, come on, I want you, I need you, please, please.” 

Tormund kisses him, too much teeth and tongue but not enough too, Tormund has been _right there_ this whole time, but so far too. He’s so busy with the kisses and the fingers digging into his arse, that he only realises Tormund is pushing inside him when he starts to feel it happen. He wrenches away from the kiss, shoving three fingers into his mouth to try and stifle his cries. 

He’s bent almost in half, one knee up against his chest and the other hooked around Tormund’s back. Tormund starts fucking him hard and fast, his fingers scratching up and down Jon’s thigh. Jon tries to choke back his own moans, so he can hear the soft gasps that Tormund lets out every time he slams home, balls deep inside him. 

Jon comes first, the friction and the fucking and the pain all too much as he tries to choke back the noise. He slumps back onto the furs and it’s different with Tormund fucking him when he’s already come, everything more sensitive and overwhelming and he reaches down to press his fingers into the bruises forming on his arse. 

He gasps and Tormund comes, collapsing onto his forearms either side of Jon’s head. He brushes hair out of Tormund’s face, smiling a little as he looks at him in a way he hasn’t dared look in almost two months. No. More than two months now. “I love you,” he whispers, because he can now. 

“I love you too,” Tormund says, looking for all the world like a reason to live through the night. 

 

It’s hard to say no to Arya. 

Some of it’s that she’s his little sister, returned from the dead. How do you say no to that? He doesn’t know. Part of it, though, is simply that she finds ‘no’ a difficult word. “You’re going to see Gendry?” she says, when she falls into step beside him after lunch. 

“Arya…” 

“You said to Sansa that you were going to see Gendry,” she says. 

“Yes, I did,” he says. “I don’t think you coming along will be helpful. I just want to talk to him about the Valyrian steel.” 

She grabs his arm. “I know steel.” 

He stops walking and stares down the corridor. When he turns back to look at her, she’s frowning, her mouth set in a grimace and her brows furrowed. “We both know that isn’t why you want to come, Arya.” 

“He was my friend. I had—he left King’s Landing with me. He was _there_ , right up until…until the Brotherhood handed him over to the priestess. I thought he was dead, like everybody else.” She doesn’t look him in face, her eyes flicking from the wall to the floor to the ceiling, from Jon’s chest to his feet. “Until I came here, I thought he was dead. Then he’s alive and he won’t…he won’t even look at me. Suddenly, it’s ‘my lady’ this and _fuck you too_.” She’s breathing hard when she falls silent. Her free hand compulsively curls into and out of a fist and he can feel the one holding his arm trying to do the same. 

Jon gently places a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I understand. I really do. I’ve lost people, not just Father and Robb but…other people too.” He sighs and drops his hand to his side. “If you want to, you can come. I don’t think it’s a good idea though.” 

She grimaces. “I heard…I heard the Queen is going to make him Lord of Storms End, that’s he’s going to marry a lady…a proper lady.” 

“The first part is true. The Queen has offered it to him, but she won’t force it on him.” He makes a face, half annoyed and half amused. “She only does that to me. The second part…I think that you might have made that up.” 

She snorts. “Maybe.” 

They walk out to the free folk camp together. The wind’s vicious and he keeps wanting to adjust Arya’s cloak, to try and keep her warm as possible. 

It’s so cold that someone has put up a tent for Gendry to do his work in. It looks like one that was brought North from far South, because it has large windows and a wide opening without a flap. Somewhere for the smoke and the steam to go, Jon supposes. 

Arya’s steps slow as they get closer to the tent. At first, he thinks it’s nerves, but she’s eyeing the two white cloaks nearby, the group of Unsullied hovering a few feet away. 

And then he hears laughter. 

Daenerys and another person, their laugh deeper and quieter. He glances at Arya. He doesn’t even have to wonder what she’s thinking. Perhaps he won’t marry a lady. Perhaps he’ll marry a queen. He wants to tell her it’s absurd, that if he becomes Lord of Storm’s End Gendry will need heirs of his own, not heirs to the Iron Throne, but she picks up her pace, walks past the Queensguard and only stops when she can just see inside. 

Jon stops beside her. Daenerys is bandaging Gendry’s arms, carefully and gently. “Do you think the kiss is necessary?” Daenerys says, with a sly, teasing grin. “Jon mentioned one in his book.” 

Arya stiffens. 

Gendry laughs, quiet and stiff. It takes a little while to grow used to Kings and Queens. “I don’t think so.” 

“Hmm, you’re probably right.” She smiles and brushes the back of her hand down Gendry’s arm, following the curves of his muscles. “I always imagined Baratheon’s as being these monstrous, ugly things but I suppose it makes sense that they weren’t. They had Valyrian blood. It would be unusual if they were monstrous.” 

“You like my muscles, Your Grace?” He’s the one smiling slyly now, like this now is something he understands. 

“I do.” Her hand falls back into her lap. “My first husband had muscles like yours. He was bigger though, altogether more impressive.” She smiles. 

Gendry laughs and Arya goes. Her steps are long and her back is slumped, tight and quivering with rage. 

 

Tormund’s freshly bathed, his hair and beard neatly combed and he has on the cloak that Sansa made for him. A hand rests on the pummel of his sword, the hand opening and closing. As much of the court as possible has crowded itself into the great hall to watch the savage kneel to the Dragon Queen. 

Sansa, Rickon and Ser Davos stand with them, but despite the crowded hall there is a noticeable circle around them absent of people. 

What do they think Tormund’s going to do? He’s been at Winterfell longer than most of them. A few of the Northern lords linger across the room, watching Tormund with obnoxious smirks. Some of the others might not understand what Tormund kneeling to Daenerys means, but the Northerners do. They know it’s going to be humiliating for him, and they plan to enjoy it. 

Daenerys had been baffled by most of the requests from the free folk. They’d wanted to elect their Lord and it had made no sense to her, but she’d decided it wasn’t unreasonable either. A Maester had been requested and would be assigned and Grand Maester Marwyn assured Tormund personally that he would ensure the Maester would be an appropriate choice. They would have a council, also elected, that would rule with the Lord. Maester Marwyn had even volunteered a second Maester to act as steward until the free folk had been living in the Gift long enough to have the skills to find their own. 

Grand Maester Marwyn had been amusingly enthusiastic about Tormund’s requests, though Lord Tyrion and some of the other Lords hadn’t been overly pleased by them. 

It was Sansa who told him that they feared being replaced, that their sons and grandsons and great-grandsons might find themselves lords of nothing in particular, being ruled over rather than ruling, if it transpired that one need not inherit anything to govern effectively. 

“Tormund Giantsbane of the Free Folk, Lord of the Gift, you have come to swear fealty.” Daenerys stands and motions Tormund forward. 

Tormund glances over at Jon, but he starts walking forward before Jon can smile or nod. He draws his sword and more than one of the Queensguard tense, but all he does is go to one knee and rest it on the ground. He says the words, looking up into Daenerys’ face. 

She replies, and then offers him a hand to help him return to his feet. “I admire your people, Tormand Giansbane,” she says, once Tormund has sheathed his sword and stood. “I have not survived Beyond the Wall, but I lead my khalasar through the Red Waste. I know what it is to hunger and to only be able to guess when food or drink will come. Sit with me and Prince Jon this evening, so you may tell me of the free folk.” 

The Northern lords have now lost their smirks and look far closer to rage than amusement. When Lord Glover catches his eye, Jon smiles and Lord Glover’s face goes from outrage to wry amusement. 

You don’t get to refuse to fight the battle and then try to claim the spoils afterwards. 

That evening, Tormund so endears himself to Daenerys with his wit and endless tales that she bids him eat with her the next three nights. By the time he’s returned to dining with his people, he’s won over Lord Tyrion and, perhaps, Lord Varys and a number of other Lords Jon doesn’t yet know by sight alone. 

“Tormund is better at this than he gives himself credit for,” Sansa says. 

 

He’s in Winterfell, one of the long stone corridors that connect the families rooms to the rest of the castle. There’s a woman, around Sansa’s age maybe. She’s tall, with pale blond hair and skin only just off the colour of freshly fallen snow, with the blush of youth in her checks. She’s smiling and a man says, “Birgitta.” 

Jon eyes widen. Tormund’s younger daughter is named Birgitta. He can see it now, in her eyes and her face. The man—the man can only be Rickon. His curly hair’s as wild in the dream as it is outside it, and he’s so very tall and broad, taller than Father, taller than Tormund. He stares down at her softly, like she’s everything he has ever wanted. “My wildling wife,” Rickon says, and she laughs. 

He’s on a beach, the heat of the sun beating down on him and the sand hot enough that if he were a normal man, it would burn. Tormund’s there, sitting on a blanket and wearing silk and cotton, his arms exposed to the sun. His face and arms are somehow tanned, freckled and sunburnt all at once. 

“We should go swimming,” Tormund says, laughing. “But I don’t know how. If I drown, will you save me?” 

He turns his head and he’s in the courtyard of a castle. He sees himself standing by a horse and there are fine lines around his eyes and maybe even the very beginnings of grey around his temples. Jon’s long since given up the idea that he would ever reach such an age, and the sight of it makes his chest grow tight. A girl screeches “Papa!” as she races towards him. She has his curly, black hair but her eyes are Targaryen purple. 

His dream-self picks the girl up, grinning. Two boys come running across the yard, both with silver hair. One has Jon’s dark almost black eyes, the other the same purple as the girls. He places the girl on the ground so he can embrace all three children at once, all of them laughing. 

A tall woman with long silver hair and purple eyes follows them out of the castle, a toddler at her hip. She’s smiling. “My lord,” she says, her eyes bright with laughter. 

“My lady,” he says. 

It seems to be a joke, but it isn’t one Jon understands. “I trust Lord Tormund was well?” she asks. 

Jon laughs. “You know he hates it when people call him that.” 

“Yes, he makes the same face every time.” She scrunches her face up, mock-annoyed, and all the children laugh. 

Jon wakes, not certain why his chest is so tight and his eyes are blurry with tears. It was a good dream, surely. 

 

It takes a long time for all the camps to pack up and get ready to leave Winterfell, and it takes the free folk the longest. They’re bad tempered when told what and how to do something, and they’re not practised at moving promptly yet. 

Daenerys and all her armies will march up the King’s Road, turn off and take Last Hearth. They will burn the enemies that remain there and leave a castellan to rule until spring and dawn comes again. Then, they shall go to Karhold and do the same. To stand behind a wall is to stand at a place of strength, unless your enemy sits behind that wall with you, then a wall is nothing. 

Sansa is staying at Winterfell and she hugs him for so long before they leave that he can’t banish the worry for her from his mind. Lord Manderley is staying with her, and he’s sworn that he will die before he allows any harm to come to her. Arya almost stays at Winterfell with Sansa, to protect her, but Sansa sends her on her way. 

Arya leaves Nymeria with Sansa, a decision that makes Jon’s heart ache and guilt settle in his stomach. He has Rhaegal and Ghost both, and wouldn’t voluntarily be parted from either. 

When they begin their trek down the King’s Road, he sits at the head of this army, atop his horse, Daenerys to his left and Rickon and Arya to his right. Grey Worm blows hard on a horn and Jon feels the sound of the horn in his bones. They begin moving, Daenerys kicking her Silver into motion first and Jon following. He can hear it, all those people trying to move at once, the creaking of the carts, the hooves on the ground, the sound of more than a hundred thousand people all moving in one direction all at once. 

And for a moment he doesn't sit astride his horse, but flies high above them all. He has wings instead of arms and they beat up and down, up and down, sending his new hard, strong body up and up and up. He stares out over the vast, endless army and out of Rhaegal's mouth comes a triumphant shriek.

He understands now. He believes.


End file.
